Baltimore has been dealt a crippling economic blow from which it will be hard to recover, says conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, a senior adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford.
"This is really a tragedy because I'm familiar with Baltimore … and how they built it up with Camden Yards and all the buildup downtown and the conventions they've got," Buchanan said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
"Let me tell you, a lot of people I'm sure are not coming to conventions. I wouldn’t be surprised if conventions are canceled.
"All this burning and looting, all the insurance rates are going to go up for all those stores in the African American neighborhoods. This is going to be a crippling blow to Baltimore."
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The conservative pundit's comments come as protests continue in Maryland's largest city, which has been rocked by arson, looting and violence after the death of an African American man, Freddie Gray, in police custody.
Buchanan blames the "dillying and dallying" of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whom he said did not act to stop "the violence and the thuggery and the looting and the arson as soon as it began and basically to impose a curfew."
"Look, people have a right to demonstrate. They don't have a right to walk down the middle of the streets when they want to," he said.
"When people start walking down the street doing what they want to do and the cops aren't stopping them and they're basically breaking the law and getting away with it, it's a short step there from picking up a rock and throwing it through a window of a store or looting a store.
"I mean you have to move decisively and early. That's the lesson of the 1960s and all those riots which were far worse than Baltimore today."
Buchanan said he's curious to see whether the Justice Department enters the picture, especially in the wake of the agency's interest in the racial problems in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.
"They had an incident that turned out to be an innocent cop defending himself [and the Justice Department] piled on the community of Ferguson," Buchanan said.
"I wonder if the Justice Department's going to investigate the failings of the city of Baltimore and why so many people were rioting in the streets there."
Buchanan is the author of
"The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority," published by Crown Forum.
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